The present invention relates to an electronic device for use in electronically growing virtual life in accordance with a program and, in particular, a virtual element selection device and method for selecting a virtual element, such as a part, a constituent, an item, and the like, to grow the virtual life in the electronic device.
Recently, electronic devices, such as personal computers, video game devices, have widely and quickly prevailed in the world. With prevalence of such electronic devices. In addition, users or customers tend to have a taste for more interesting video games and more complicated video games. This brings about a difficulty or complexion of handling or manipulating the electronic devices.
Among new types of such video games, a growing or raising simulation game (will be simply called a growing game) has been proposed in which virtual life is grown in the electronic devices. As known in the art, such a growing game includes a game (will be called a first game) of growing or raising virtual life by battling with an enemy like a role playing game, a game (will be called a second game)of raising virtual life by searching a predetermined treasure or key word in the game, or a game (will be called a third game) of enjoying reaction or activity of virtual life by feeding the virtual life like a pet or by giving a stimulus to the virtual life.
In the first and the second games mentioned above, the growth or variation of the virtual life depends on the number and species of battled enemies and kinds of the key words. on the other hand, the growth or variation of the virtual life relies in the third game on a species or a quantity of foods and a kind of stimuli given to the virtual life.
Alternatively, another type of a growing simulation game has been disclosed, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 9-140938, namely, 140938/1997. In this growing simulation game, a virtual baseball player can favorably grow into a successful baseball player by conveniently displaying characters or attributes from a menu and by conveniently and successively opting one of the characters or attributes from the menu. In this event, selecting the characters or attributes from the menu reflects user's or customer's personality, namely, intention.
However, user's personality can not completely be reflected on growing the virtual baseball player because options are previously determined on the menu and are only selected by the user. In other words, user's intention partially or discretely influences the growth and variation of the virtual baseball player when one of the options alone is selected by the user from the menu displayed.
Under the circumstances, when the same or a similar option is selected by the user, the same or similar results are obtained. Stated otherwise, when virtual life is given the same or like stimulus, the growth of the virtual life is uniquely determined whoever grows the virtual life.
In order to provide a variety of options, a great amount of menu information should be stored in a memory to be displayed as a menu and gives rise to a problem in economy. In other words, the memory must be large in memory capacity.
Moreover, the conventional approach mentioned above previously determines a relationship between a given option and the corresponding activity or reaction of the virtual life. This makes it difficult to intuitively know about relationships between each option and the corresponding activity or reaction of the virtual life because neither the activity nor the reaction can be tried in connection with the other options unselected by the user. Furthermore, the user can not know about what kind of a tendency or taste the virtual life has in the game. For example, the user can not give or select an instruction, such as a taste for a resembling matter, a taste for a soft configuration rather than a square configuration. As a result, the conventional approach lacks reality.